Emeritus Professor of Leadership Studies

Trained as an anthropologist, Professor Jonathan Gosling worked for several years as a mediator in neighbourhood conflicts in London, founded the UK‘s first community mediation service and was the founding Secretary of the European Conference on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution. After taking a mid-career MBA, he moved into management education at Lancaster University, where he directed the MBA and other programmes for British Airways and other major companies. He co-founded, with Henry Mintzberg and three other malcontents, a new approach to management education, the International Masters in Practising Management. This takes place in six countries around the world, and has been the springboard for several subsequent innovations in helping practising mangers to improve the way they manage. Professor Gosling also played a significant role in the so-called ‘critical management‘ movement, launching an influential MPhil and PhD and contributing to the development of specialist conferences and interest groups. At Exeter he led the growth of leadership studies towards a consisted research and publishing profile, significant contributions to undergraduate education, and headed Executive Education for several years. In 2009/10 he collaborated with Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud at WWF International to co-found the One Planet MBA, the first MBA designed explicitly to build on the implications of a fundamental but seldom-questioned assumption: that we have just one planet - and we’ve all got to get along on it!

Amongst the many questions posed by this approach is ‘How will value be negotiated in the food and agriculture supply chain?', where producers vie for control with international companies, and nature is valued in different, often incommensurable ways. This complex issue is crucial to enabling peace, health and environmental sustainability across the world, and could be a driver for economic reform; Prof Gosling has co-founded Business, Nature Value, a multidisciplinary, international research cluster to address the issue.

Professor Gosling has published articles in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Leadership, Management Learning, Academy of Management Learning and Education, and in many more practice-oriented outlets. He is currently finalising a text book based on the One Planet MBA. His most recent book isNapoleonic Leadership: A study in power(Sage, 2015); following his Nelson‘s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Commander, published for the 2005 bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. Both books underpin popular talks and workshops on contemporary strategic leadership. Prof Gosling has also written several core texts on leadership, including ‘Key Concepts’ titles for Rutledge (2008) and Sage (2013); a successful text book Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organisational and Social Perspectives for Oxford University Press (2011, with colleagues at Exeter); and several other collections including one on leadership lessons from fiction.

As former director of the Centre for Leadership Studies (2002-2009), he works with a world-wide first-rate team of researchers, teachers and consultants collectively making a significant impact on both the understanding and practice of leadership.

Professor Gosling is currently (2015) Visiting Professor in the School of Philosophy at Renmin University of China, where he delivered a series of lectures on the Philosophy of Leadership. He held an Otto Mønsted Fellowship at Copenhagen Business School (2014), working on ’the pleasures of power’; was 2009 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership Development at INSEAD, France, working on experiential methods in leadership development; and has held similar posts at at McGill University, Quebec; Lund University, Sweden; and IEDC Bled School of Management, Slovenia.

He retired from Exeter in July 2015, much before the official retirement age, in order to focus on more immediate and impactful contributions to society; he remains active as an Emeritus Professor at Exeter, and can be contacted at http://www.jonathangosling.com

Research interests

Leadership and ethics in current strategic changes

Contemporary innovations in leadership development

Fostering continuity in change through leadership

Leadership and management development. Much of Professor Gosling's work for the past 10 years has been focused on elucidating the contribution made by various interventions in organisations, ranging from formal management training to collective narrative processes (indicative publications: Gosling, 1996; Gosling and Mintzberg, 2002 (Runner-up, best published paper, Academy of Management), 2003, 2004; Bolden, Gosling and Wood, 2005; Gosling and Purg, 2007). Several of these publications have given rise to substantial debate, press coverage and further publications in industry journals. A recently completed two-year research project for the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education has produced numerous reports and articles (see references to Bolden, Gosling and Petrov below); and a follow-on project examining the relationships between HEIs and businesses in the SW. Current research focuses on how technical experts and 'deal-makers' can be assisted to 'step up to leadership', especially in international, multi-cultural organisations.

Leading continuity and change. Much of what leaders and managers actually do is clearly aimed at sustaining the continuity of operations and, more importantly, of a shared identity in their organisations. Professor Gosling has examined the activity of managers and the structure of managerial tasks in a number of situations, with a medium-term aim of developing a theory of continuity. Early work looked at conflict resolution processes (Gosling 1994a, 1996; Linstead, Gosling et. al., 2004), but is now focused more directly on general leadership roles.

Psychoanalytic perspectives on leadership studies. Some of Professor Gosling's earlier work on management development drew on the work of Wilfred Bion as a basis for analysing group dependency on teachers and facilitators (Gosling and Ashton, 1994). Later work on community identity and leadership (Gosling, 1996b) drew on John Bowlby's theory of attachment, though Professor Gosling has returned to Bion's application of Kleinian theory in more recent work - of which an early paper was nominated for the 'best paper' award at the American Academy of Management (Gosling and Western, 2004). A new branch of this work now underway is to link the psychoanalytic concept of 'containment' to classical concepts of 'care of the self'. This builds on Professor Gosling's earlier work on Platonic influences on leadership theory (Gosling, 1996a) and links to shared interests with his former colleague in CLS, Prof. Peter Case (Case and Gosling, 2007). This has now evolved into a continuing series of enquiry and papers, linking pre-modern wisdom traditions to contemporary systems psychodynamic concepts (French, Case and Gosling, 2009; Gosling and Case, forthcoming).

Fundamental concepts of leadership. Professor Gosling has worked on the predominance of psychological constructs in the leadership canon, and articulated alternatives drawn from analytic language philosophy (with Antonio Marturano, former Research Fellow), to appear in Philosophy and Management in (Marturano, Gosling and Wood, 2010). This paper makes important links to an earlier debate in the literature (Organization Science, 1992 and 1993) with innovative solutions to conceptual problems raised at that time; and points to further links to infomatics, genetics and bio-ethics. In the meantime, Professor Gosling has published 'Leadership: The Key Concepts' (Marturano and Gosling, 2008, Routledge).

Key publications

Abstract:Social dreaming and ecocentric ethics: sources of non-rational insight in the face of climate change catastrophe

The article considers the role of dreams as social, rather than individual, phenomena and suggests that as such they may serve as resources for ‘future imaginings’ with respect to potentially devastating consequences of climate change (and other transgressions of planetary boundaries). Adopting a socio-analytical perspective, it contemplates the possibility of a societal level ‘cosmology episode’ caused by catastrophic climate change; a critical point of rupture in the meaning-making process which leaves local rationalities in ruin. Drawing on a ‘representative anecdote’, the article finds allegorical parallels between the cultural collapse of a traditional indigenous culture and the impending threat of ecocrisis currently facing humanity. The possibilities of seeing and imagining offered by collective forms of dreaming are explored alongside development of a non-anthropocentric ethics. Our focus is on ways of sensing, thinking and talking about climate change that are less dependent on a rational conscious subject. The article thus enquires into what cultural means or resources might be available to (post)modern western societies that, like the shamanic dream-vision of certain traditional cultures, might enable them to draw on non-anthropocentric sensibilities and organize responses to an impending cultural crisis. We conclude by offering Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix as one possible medium through which to imagine and see beyond climate change catastrophe.

Abstract:Leadership as Language Game

Process theories of leadership emphasize its relational nature but lack a substantial method of analysis. We offer an account of leadership as a language-game, employing the concepts of opaque context and propositional attitudes. Using established methods of linguistic analysis, we reformulate Weber’s understanding of charismatic leadership. A by-product of this approach is to limit the epistemological role of individual psychology in leadership studies, and to increase the relevance of linguistic and semantic conventions.

This paper offers. a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Ezioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the ‘spiritual organization’, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of ‘work organization’ and ‘spirituality’ discourses.

Journal articles

Abstract:Developing Critical dialogue in leadership development

Criticality and what it means to be critical for both leadership development research and practice is the focus of this inquiry. In so doing, attention is paid, not just to what a critical voice needs to engage with, but how criticality can be constructed and sustained. Thus, the concept and method of dialogue is used to explore, tease out and debate the meanings and implications of criticality for leadership development. Consequently, an approach is structured around four views, or ‘takes’, on the question of criticality for leadership development, followed by four associated phases of dialogue which question, prod, surmise, explore and debate each successive take. Our four takes on criticality suggest that critical leadership development should engage, unsettle and arouse four key aspects: Performance(s), Person(s), Practice(s), and Perspective(s). Issues of performativity, power, relationality, identity, emancipation and purpose are found to be core to a critical leadership development approach.

Abstract:Responsible leadership education and the ethical mindset: Responsibility to whom and for what?

This paper offers an analysis of leadership responsibility associated with differing models of the firm. Following a critique of the classical economic and conventional stakeholder theories of the firm, we proposes an interactive stakeholder theory that better facilitates the kind of ethical responsibility demanded by twenty-first century challenges. Our analysis also leads us to conclude that leadership education and development is in need of urgent reform. The first part of the paper focuses on what it means to lead responsibly, and argues that leading is essentially the practice of responsibility. The second part of the paper challenges standard assumptions about the ‘business of business’, while the third section examines in more depth how leadership education might be configured as a preparation for the enactment of responsible leadership.KEYWORDS: responsible leadership, ethics, leadership education, mindsets, stakeholder theory

Abstract:Sustainability-driven innovation and the Climate Savers’ programme: Experience of international companies in China

Purpose - This study explores the experience of eight international companies focusing on their strategies in sustainable innovations in China.

Design/methodology/approach - This investigation is accomplished using a case study methodology (Yin, 1989; Eisen¬hart, 1989). The research is based on the companies’ secondary data and forty-seven semi-structured face-to-face interviews carried out in Chinese (Mandarin) between September 2010 and March 2012. Access to the selected companies was supported by WWF China.

Findings - the findings of this study are summarised in a theoretical framework suggesting four different levels of MNCs sustainability-driven innovations in China.

Research limitations/implications - the paper is based on the research population of MNCs being WWF Climate Savers partners in China. The research sample has no Chinese-solely companies.

Originality/value - from the academic perspective this research is a qualitative analysis of the best practices in sustainable innovation of MNCs in China and an attempt to map them to a theoretical framework. From a policy-making perspective, this paper is a report on existing practices and positive experience in responsible industry leadership. For practitioners this study shows how to create profitable growth in harmony with environmental sustainability and good corporate citizenship.

Gosling J, Case P (In Press). Taking up a role as an affordance of knowledge: a psychodynamic interpretation of the rebirth motif in Plato’s Myth of Er. Organization Studies

Abstract:Taking up a role as an affordance of knowledge: a psychodynamic interpretation of the rebirth motif in Plato’s Myth of Er

This article offers a psychoanalytically-informed contribution to current organization studies debates regarding role transitions. It draws on two principal theoretical sources: pre-modern treatments of the migration of the Soul from one state to another (used as a metaphor for role transitions); and the systems psychodynamic construct of ‘managing oneself in role’. The principle mythological source for the article is the Myth of Er, found toward the end of Plato’s Republic and in which is recounted the experience of the soul in limbo. We find in this an epistemological argument beyond its more obvious analogies to psychological experience, which we also explore. We argue that taking up a role is co-terminus with taking up knowledge associated with that role, and thus contribute a conceptualisation of role transitions that is epistemological as well as psychological. One implication is a theory of knowledge that refers to ideas as wholes rendered particular by role-holders: we explore two processes involved in this particularization: choosing and forgetting. A second implication is to interpret learning as realization of properties inherent in a role, rather than the acquisition of new personal knowledge. A third implication is that roles now appear as affordances, offering unforeseen opportunities.

Abstract:Citizens of the academic community? a societal perspective on leadership in UK Higher Education

This paper presents findings from a research project on academic leadership in UK higher education (HE). Rather than taking a leader-centric perspective, however, people were asked to respond from their role as ‘citizens’ of HE. A ‘listening post’ methodology was employed, in which participants engaged in associative dialogue about their hopes, anxieties and aspirations in regards to their membership of an academic community. Thematic analysis revealed six key themes: bipolarity; vulnerability and exclusion; lack of transparency; growth of managerialism; changing nature of HE; and citizenship and community. Whilst findings indicated a fair degree of disengagement from institutional governance, they also pointed towards a genuine sense of passion and commitment to the aims and purpose of HE. The implications of these findings for leadership within these contexts are discussed, as well as consideration of the linkages between leadership, identity and citizenship in HE.

Gosling J, Jia F, Gong Y, brown SE (2014). The role of supply chain leadership in the learning of sustainable practice: Toward an integrated framework. Journal of Cleaner Production

Abstract:The role of supply chain leadership in the learning of sustainable practice: Toward an integrated framework

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is a topic that has become increasingly important in recent years. However, very few papers focus on studying SSCM from both leadership and learning perspectives. In this research, we carry out a content-based literature review on the intersections of Supply Chain leadership, Supply Chain Learning and SSCM; we propose a conceptual framework on how focal companies assuming a leadership role initiate and disseminate sustainable practices in their supply chains. Three types of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) strategies (i.e. reactive, contributive and proactive) have been identified in this research based on four dimensions of SSCM governance, supply chain learning, supply chain leadership and SSCM performance. It is argued that two new constructs of supply chain learning and supply chain leadership are an integral part of the SSCM conceptual framework developed from the literature and have significant implication to our understanding of SSCM.

Abstract:Social dreaming and ecocentric ethics: sources of non-rational insight in the face of climate change catastrophe

The article considers the role of dreams as social, rather than individual, phenomena and suggests that as such they may serve as resources for ‘future imaginings’ with respect to potentially devastating consequences of climate change (and other transgressions of planetary boundaries). Adopting a socio-analytical perspective, it contemplates the possibility of a societal level ‘cosmology episode’ caused by catastrophic climate change; a critical point of rupture in the meaning-making process which leaves local rationalities in ruin. Drawing on a ‘representative anecdote’, the article finds allegorical parallels between the cultural collapse of a traditional indigenous culture and the impending threat of ecocrisis currently facing humanity. The possibilities of seeing and imagining offered by collective forms of dreaming are explored alongside development of a non-anthropocentric ethics. Our focus is on ways of sensing, thinking and talking about climate change that are less dependent on a rational conscious subject. The article thus enquires into what cultural means or resources might be available to (post)modern western societies that, like the shamanic dream-vision of certain traditional cultures, might enable them to draw on non-anthropocentric sensibilities and organize responses to an impending cultural crisis. We conclude by offering Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix as one possible medium through which to imagine and see beyond climate change catastrophe.

Abstract:Leadership as Language Game

Process theories of leadership emphasize its relational nature but lack a substantial method of analysis. We offer an account of leadership as a language-game, employing the concepts of opaque context and propositional attitudes. Using established methods of linguistic analysis, we reformulate Weber’s understanding of charismatic leadership. A by-product of this approach is to limit the epistemological role of individual psychology in leadership studies, and to increase the relevance of linguistic and semantic conventions.

This paper offers. a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Ezioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the ‘spiritual organization’, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of ‘work organization’ and ‘spirituality’ discourses.

Abstract:High Performance Leadership: Narratives of identity and control in corporate leadership development and performance management

This article reviews the outcomes of a three year workshop series with senior leadership and management development managers from a range of public and private sector organisations. The aim of this enquiry was to explore the interface between performance management and leadership development systems and the extent to which they can complement one another to offer a coherent progression and performance framework. A number of competing and inter-related dynamics were uncovered that influence the extent to which performance management systems facilitate appropriate and desirable forms of behaviour in organisations and the extent to which these are supported and reinforced through leadership development. The most significant of these influences was seen to be one of identity and the impact that these systems can have on a sense of shared ‘social identity’ and purpose. By way of conclusion we argue that the narrative function of corporate leadership systems in expressing ‘who we are’ and ‘what we value’ is equally, if not more, important in determining their impact (positive or negative) than their corrective or developmental capacity per se.

UK higher education is undergoing a period of significant change that generatesa series of tensions and difficulties for universities and university leaders.This paper explores these tensions through analysis of findings from a studycomprising 152 semi-structured face-to-face interviews in 12 UK universities.Building on from theories of ‘distributed leadership’ in schools, five mainconstituent elements of leadership practice in higher education are identified(personal, social, structural, contextual and developmental) and explored toshow how they shape perceptions and experiences of leadership. The paperconcludes with a refined model that teases apart the multilayered nature ofhigher education leadership at individual, group and organisational levels. Inparticular, it is argued that ‘social capital’ and ‘social identity’ act as importantbridges between individual agency and organisational structure and thatalthough widely distributed, higher education leadership may be best regardedas ‘hybrid’.

Gosling J, Mintzberg H (2003). The Five Minds of a Manager. Harvard Business Review, 81(11), 54-63.

Abstract:The Five Minds of a Manager

Managers are told: be global and be local. Collaborate and compete. Change, perpetually, and maintain order. Make the numbers while nurturing your people. To be effective, managers need to consider the juxtapositions in order to arrive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradictory concerns. That means they must focus not only on what they have to accomplish but also on how they have to think.When the authors, respectively the director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the U.K. and the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, set out to develop a masters program for practicing managers, they saw that they could not rely on the usual MBA educational structure, which divides the management world into discrete business functions such as marketing and accounting. They needed an educational structure that would encourage synthesis rather than separation. Managing, they determined, involves five tasks, each with its own mind-set: managing the self (the reflective mind-set); managing organizations (the analytic mind-set); managing context (the worldly mind-set); managing relationships (the collaborative mind-set); and managing change (the action mind-set). The program is built on the exploration and integration of those five aspects of the managerial mind. The authors say it has proved powerful in the classroom and insightful in practice.Imagine the mind-sets as threads and the manager as weaver. Effective performance means weaving each mind-set over and under the others to create a fine, sturdy cloth.

Publications by year

In Press

Abstract:Developing Critical dialogue in leadership development

Criticality and what it means to be critical for both leadership development research and practice is the focus of this inquiry. In so doing, attention is paid, not just to what a critical voice needs to engage with, but how criticality can be constructed and sustained. Thus, the concept and method of dialogue is used to explore, tease out and debate the meanings and implications of criticality for leadership development. Consequently, an approach is structured around four views, or ‘takes’, on the question of criticality for leadership development, followed by four associated phases of dialogue which question, prod, surmise, explore and debate each successive take. Our four takes on criticality suggest that critical leadership development should engage, unsettle and arouse four key aspects: Performance(s), Person(s), Practice(s), and Perspective(s). Issues of performativity, power, relationality, identity, emancipation and purpose are found to be core to a critical leadership development approach.

Abstract:Responsible leadership education and the ethical mindset: Responsibility to whom and for what?

This paper offers an analysis of leadership responsibility associated with differing models of the firm. Following a critique of the classical economic and conventional stakeholder theories of the firm, we proposes an interactive stakeholder theory that better facilitates the kind of ethical responsibility demanded by twenty-first century challenges. Our analysis also leads us to conclude that leadership education and development is in need of urgent reform. The first part of the paper focuses on what it means to lead responsibly, and argues that leading is essentially the practice of responsibility. The second part of the paper challenges standard assumptions about the ‘business of business’, while the third section examines in more depth how leadership education might be configured as a preparation for the enactment of responsible leadership.KEYWORDS: responsible leadership, ethics, leadership education, mindsets, stakeholder theory

Abstract:Sustainability-driven innovation and the Climate Savers’ programme: Experience of international companies in China

Purpose - This study explores the experience of eight international companies focusing on their strategies in sustainable innovations in China.

Design/methodology/approach - This investigation is accomplished using a case study methodology (Yin, 1989; Eisen¬hart, 1989). The research is based on the companies’ secondary data and forty-seven semi-structured face-to-face interviews carried out in Chinese (Mandarin) between September 2010 and March 2012. Access to the selected companies was supported by WWF China.

Findings - the findings of this study are summarised in a theoretical framework suggesting four different levels of MNCs sustainability-driven innovations in China.

Research limitations/implications - the paper is based on the research population of MNCs being WWF Climate Savers partners in China. The research sample has no Chinese-solely companies.

Originality/value - from the academic perspective this research is a qualitative analysis of the best practices in sustainable innovation of MNCs in China and an attempt to map them to a theoretical framework. From a policy-making perspective, this paper is a report on existing practices and positive experience in responsible industry leadership. For practitioners this study shows how to create profitable growth in harmony with environmental sustainability and good corporate citizenship.

Gosling J, Case P (In Press). Taking up a role as an affordance of knowledge: a psychodynamic interpretation of the rebirth motif in Plato’s Myth of Er. Organization Studies

Abstract:Taking up a role as an affordance of knowledge: a psychodynamic interpretation of the rebirth motif in Plato’s Myth of Er

This article offers a psychoanalytically-informed contribution to current organization studies debates regarding role transitions. It draws on two principal theoretical sources: pre-modern treatments of the migration of the Soul from one state to another (used as a metaphor for role transitions); and the systems psychodynamic construct of ‘managing oneself in role’. The principle mythological source for the article is the Myth of Er, found toward the end of Plato’s Republic and in which is recounted the experience of the soul in limbo. We find in this an epistemological argument beyond its more obvious analogies to psychological experience, which we also explore. We argue that taking up a role is co-terminus with taking up knowledge associated with that role, and thus contribute a conceptualisation of role transitions that is epistemological as well as psychological. One implication is a theory of knowledge that refers to ideas as wholes rendered particular by role-holders: we explore two processes involved in this particularization: choosing and forgetting. A second implication is to interpret learning as realization of properties inherent in a role, rather than the acquisition of new personal knowledge. A third implication is that roles now appear as affordances, offering unforeseen opportunities.

2014

Abstract:Citizens of the academic community? a societal perspective on leadership in UK Higher Education

This paper presents findings from a research project on academic leadership in UK higher education (HE). Rather than taking a leader-centric perspective, however, people were asked to respond from their role as ‘citizens’ of HE. A ‘listening post’ methodology was employed, in which participants engaged in associative dialogue about their hopes, anxieties and aspirations in regards to their membership of an academic community. Thematic analysis revealed six key themes: bipolarity; vulnerability and exclusion; lack of transparency; growth of managerialism; changing nature of HE; and citizenship and community. Whilst findings indicated a fair degree of disengagement from institutional governance, they also pointed towards a genuine sense of passion and commitment to the aims and purpose of HE. The implications of these findings for leadership within these contexts are discussed, as well as consideration of the linkages between leadership, identity and citizenship in HE.

Effective program management is essential to ensure the elimination and eventual eradication of malaria. Malaria elimination, defined as the interruption of local transmission in a specific geographical area, is a long-term, focused and technical process that requires effective management and communication at all levels. There are several core features of successful health program management, all of which are critical to achieve elimination. In general, elimination is facilitated by robust health systems, determined leadership, appropriate incentivization, an effective and real-time surveillance system, and regional collaborations. Elimination is hampered by sclerotic or inflexible health systems, a lack of sustained political and financial commitment, ill-equipped managers, unmotivated and untrained staff and external donor constraints.

Gosling J, Jia F, Gong Y, brown SE (2014). The role of supply chain leadership in the learning of sustainable practice: Toward an integrated framework. Journal of Cleaner Production

Abstract:The role of supply chain leadership in the learning of sustainable practice: Toward an integrated framework

Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) is a topic that has become increasingly important in recent years. However, very few papers focus on studying SSCM from both leadership and learning perspectives. In this research, we carry out a content-based literature review on the intersections of Supply Chain leadership, Supply Chain Learning and SSCM; we propose a conceptual framework on how focal companies assuming a leadership role initiate and disseminate sustainable practices in their supply chains. Three types of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) strategies (i.e. reactive, contributive and proactive) have been identified in this research based on four dimensions of SSCM governance, supply chain learning, supply chain leadership and SSCM performance. It is argued that two new constructs of supply chain learning and supply chain leadership are an integral part of the SSCM conceptual framework developed from the literature and have significant implication to our understanding of SSCM.

Abstract:Social dreaming and ecocentric ethics: sources of non-rational insight in the face of climate change catastrophe

The article considers the role of dreams as social, rather than individual, phenomena and suggests that as such they may serve as resources for ‘future imaginings’ with respect to potentially devastating consequences of climate change (and other transgressions of planetary boundaries). Adopting a socio-analytical perspective, it contemplates the possibility of a societal level ‘cosmology episode’ caused by catastrophic climate change; a critical point of rupture in the meaning-making process which leaves local rationalities in ruin. Drawing on a ‘representative anecdote’, the article finds allegorical parallels between the cultural collapse of a traditional indigenous culture and the impending threat of ecocrisis currently facing humanity. The possibilities of seeing and imagining offered by collective forms of dreaming are explored alongside development of a non-anthropocentric ethics. Our focus is on ways of sensing, thinking and talking about climate change that are less dependent on a rational conscious subject. The article thus enquires into what cultural means or resources might be available to (post)modern western societies that, like the shamanic dream-vision of certain traditional cultures, might enable them to draw on non-anthropocentric sensibilities and organize responses to an impending cultural crisis. We conclude by offering Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix as one possible medium through which to imagine and see beyond climate change catastrophe.

Abstract:Exploring Identity Dynamics as Critical for Leadership Development Research and Practice

Abstract:Leadership as Language Game

Process theories of leadership emphasize its relational nature but lack a substantial method of analysis. We offer an account of leadership as a language-game, employing the concepts of opaque context and propositional attitudes. Using established methods of linguistic analysis, we reformulate Weber’s understanding of charismatic leadership. A by-product of this approach is to limit the epistemological role of individual psychology in leadership studies, and to increase the relevance of linguistic and semantic conventions.

This paper offers. a theoretical contribution to the current debate on workplace spirituality by: (a) providing a selective critical review of scholarship, research and corporate practices which treat workplace spirituality in performative terms, that is, as a resource or means to be manipulated instrumentally and appropriated for economic ends; (b) extending Ezioni’s analysis of complex organizations and proposing a new category, the ‘spiritual organization’, and; (c) positing three alternative positions with respect to workplace spirituality that follow from the preceding critique. The spiritual organization can be taken to represent the development of a trajectory of social technologies that have sought, incrementally, to control the bodies, minds, emotions and souls of employees. Alternatively, it might be employed to conceptualize the way in which employees use the workplace as a site for pursuing their own spiritualities (a reverse instrumentalism). Finally, we consider the possible incommensurability of ‘work organization’ and ‘spirituality’ discourses.

Abstract:High Performance Leadership: Narratives of identity and control in corporate leadership development and performance management

This article reviews the outcomes of a three year workshop series with senior leadership and management development managers from a range of public and private sector organisations. The aim of this enquiry was to explore the interface between performance management and leadership development systems and the extent to which they can complement one another to offer a coherent progression and performance framework. A number of competing and inter-related dynamics were uncovered that influence the extent to which performance management systems facilitate appropriate and desirable forms of behaviour in organisations and the extent to which these are supported and reinforced through leadership development. The most significant of these influences was seen to be one of identity and the impact that these systems can have on a sense of shared ‘social identity’ and purpose. By way of conclusion we argue that the narrative function of corporate leadership systems in expressing ‘who we are’ and ‘what we value’ is equally, if not more, important in determining their impact (positive or negative) than their corrective or developmental capacity per se.

UK higher education is undergoing a period of significant change that generatesa series of tensions and difficulties for universities and university leaders.This paper explores these tensions through analysis of findings from a studycomprising 152 semi-structured face-to-face interviews in 12 UK universities.Building on from theories of ‘distributed leadership’ in schools, five mainconstituent elements of leadership practice in higher education are identified(personal, social, structural, contextual and developmental) and explored toshow how they shape perceptions and experiences of leadership. The paperconcludes with a refined model that teases apart the multilayered nature ofhigher education leadership at individual, group and organisational levels. Inparticular, it is argued that ‘social capital’ and ‘social identity’ act as importantbridges between individual agency and organisational structure and thatalthough widely distributed, higher education leadership may be best regardedas ‘hybrid’.

2003

Gosling J, Mintzberg H (2003). The Five Minds of a Manager. Harvard Business Review, 81(11), 54-63.

Abstract:The Five Minds of a Manager

Managers are told: be global and be local. Collaborate and compete. Change, perpetually, and maintain order. Make the numbers while nurturing your people. To be effective, managers need to consider the juxtapositions in order to arrive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradictory concerns. That means they must focus not only on what they have to accomplish but also on how they have to think.When the authors, respectively the director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the U.K. and the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, set out to develop a masters program for practicing managers, they saw that they could not rely on the usual MBA educational structure, which divides the management world into discrete business functions such as marketing and accounting. They needed an educational structure that would encourage synthesis rather than separation. Managing, they determined, involves five tasks, each with its own mind-set: managing the self (the reflective mind-set); managing organizations (the analytic mind-set); managing context (the worldly mind-set); managing relationships (the collaborative mind-set); and managing change (the action mind-set). The program is built on the exploration and integration of those five aspects of the managerial mind. The authors say it has proved powerful in the classroom and insightful in practice.Imagine the mind-sets as threads and the manager as weaver. Effective performance means weaving each mind-set over and under the others to create a fine, sturdy cloth.

Professor Gosling's teaching is focused on the practices of leading and managing, aiming to directly confront the difficulties, excitements, motivations and effects. In some circumstances, he approaches this through experiential methods (derived from systems psychodynamics) in a highly participative manner. At other times, he pursues a more philosophical mode of enquiry into questions such as ‘what is the right thing to do?‘, ‘what is a leader responsible for?‘ and ‘what are the most important things to get right?‘. Another approach is to examine some of the more colourful leaders from history, to analyse their particular talents and madnesses, as well as the other actors and circumstances that contributed to their successes (and failures).

The following list shows a selection of programmes taught on behalf of Exeter University. For other offerings please contact Prof Gosling directly.

Executive Education: degree-bearing (indicative selection)

MA and MRes in Leadership Studies (Lecturer and Supervisor, 2002-2014)